‘Is Hollywood Imploding?’

Is the notion of the movie star obsolete? Barry Norman of the London Daily Mail seems to think so — and he blames Hollywood’s teenage audience for making Hollywood’s teenage-looking leading men increasingly superfluous. “Today, the mass of cinema audiences is aged between 15 and 18 — and that’s what poses such a threat to the existence of big movie stars:”

Kids of that age are not interested in veterans like Hanks (55), Cruise (49) or even Depp (48), except when he plays Jack Sparrow in the frankly juvenile Pirates Of The Caribbean series. Watching old men like them on screen would be like watching their fathers cavorting about.Even Roberts (44), Diaz (39) and Jolie (36), desirable as they might be to the audiences’ dads, come across as little more than auntie figures.

This modern, young audience has no interest in the established stars. What it wants to see is either people closer to its own age (for instance Robert Pattinson, 25, as a toothsome vampire in the Twilight saga) or crash-bang special effects in films such as the sci-fi Transformers series, or in the X-Men superheroes films, or the forthcoming Captain America.

They’re also partial to movies with men behaving badly, such as Hangover 2, or girls behaving badly, as in America’s surprise hit of the summer, Bridesmaids — neither of which features anybody you’ve ever really heard of.

All true, but nothing we haven’t been hearing about for several years, at least. But somehow the failure of the Tom Hanks/Julia Robert vehicle Larry Crowne seems like a milestone in the slo-mo death of the movie star. It’s not that audiences didn’t respond to it but the reason why they didn’t respond: It’s not a very good movie. It’s like the movie stars aren’t even trying anymore.

Is this just more of the same doom-and-gloom we’ve been hearing for a few years now? Or is something bigger happening?

Is Hollywood imploding? Are we seeing a seimic shift in how Hollywood operates, perhaps akin to the shift to blockbusters in the late 1970s? Can Hollywood endure making only movies for kids? What will Hollywood look like in 10 years?

As we mentioned here last week, 20 years ago, reporter Julie Salamon documented how political correctness made it virtually impossible for Hollywood to successfully film a movie version of The Bonfire of the Vanities. At the time of her book The Devil’s Candy, PC had only then just begun to escape from the laboratory of the mad scientists of academia and seep into the media overculture. A decade later, PC would make it nearly impossible for Hollywood to tell the story of 9/11 and the then-nascent War On Terror. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, Hollywood seemed like it was only capable of working off a handful of templates:

The Epic Quest movie (The Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and Star Wars franchises.)

The mindless zillion dollar popcorn action movie, usually with a sci-fi or comic book theme, and often itself a variation on the Epic Quest formula.

Raunchy sex comedies.

Anti-War agitprop.

Small-budget art films for urban (read: left-wing audiences).

Small-budget documentaries for urban (read: left-wing audiences).

And the Pixar franchise.

Which is why the question of Hollywood’s implosion was being asked six years ago — when the rest of the economy was humming along rather swimmingly, at least compared with today. (Curiously, Hollywood seemed to do OK during the Depression of the 1930s. Wonder why?)

7 Comments, 7 Threads

1.
Tancred

Ed, I think your assessment is correct but doesn’t go far enough. There are other reasons as well:

(1) Somewhere along the line Hollywood stopped making movies for adults, believing (erroneously) that if they didn’t pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience, viewers would stay away and they’d lose business. What they don’t get is that grownups are hungry for entertainment that doesn’t insult their intelligence and/or sensibilities.

(2) Hollywood is overwhelmingly inbred when it comes to giving new writers a chance to pitch (never mind sell) their screenplays. Most agencies don’t even accept query letters unless they’re preceded by referrals from someone the agent knows. So what we get are recycled, formulaic plots, remakes, and comic book adaptations, which of course feed back into reason no. 1, above.

(3) Gone are the days of studio moguls as creative visionaries. Studios today are run by business school grads who work at the behest of ginormous multinational conglomerations. All they can see are flow charts and the demographic data that fill them.

(4) Going to the movies is just too darn expensive for a lot of people, especially in this struggling economy. Potential viewers are staying away in droves (to quote Sam Goldwyn), preferring instead to catch movies once they hit cable TV or Netflix.

Until they address some of these issues, as well as those that Ed mentioned above, Hollywood will continue to decline. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

If you are a reader of books it comes as a surprise that some of the latest and best books that deal with terrorism have not been made into movies. Authors like Vince Flynn and Rosenberg who write mostly about Muslim terrorist have been totally ignored. As you mentioned above even the books that were about Islamic terrorists were changed to use a non existent enemy to keep from having to deal with reprisals from the religion of peace. Hollywood is a cowardly bunch of left wing egos that think it is ok to disrespect Christians and conservatives but can’t find the same enthusiasm to go after the REAL world wide terrorist.

Movies and television will become more and more alike in form and content. Look how many ads you have to sit through at the start of a DVD, whether rented or bought; much like television commercials. Look how many movies have produced so many sequels that they resemble a television series. Few G-rated movies are screened anymore, so television has become more risque and coarse in competition.

Recently, in an attempt to figure out why television and movies are so biased in the liberal direction while talk radio is 90% conservative, I read Ben Shapiro’s “Prime Time Propaganda” and Bill Press’s “Toxic Talk.” I concluded that the two media are pursuing two different audiences. The television producers want the 18-49 age group, while the talk radio producers want the middle-aged. Barry Norman’s argument that movies are now made primarily for teenagers who don’t want to watch stars over 25 strengthens my conclusion. If he and I are both correct, then in ten years movies are going to look the way television already does. You’ll know it has happened when movies begin to include canned laughter.

I know I am addressing a male, political type audience, and from your point of view, you are absolutely correct. For example: Avatar. Sci Fi, the bad guys represent rapacious western civilization, with the US Army the evil killers of gentle funny looking blue critters. That movie cost some $1 billion, and (because it was totally techie cool) made some $1.5 billion in the box office, ie if you had invested $100 in Cameron, you would have made $50 profit less the many years it was in production, etc etc. Notice also that the big New Thing supposedly introduced by Avatar (3D) has not appeared.

Now, you mention the toothsome Rob Pattinson. The Twilight movie earned TEN TIMES ITS COST!!! It has made its production company a largish player in Hollywood. Now, why? It was based on a popular woman-centered romantic adventure set in the USA, it has no hot sex scenes, the hero is totally in love with the heroine, and she is totally in love with the hero. Twilight isn’t particularly about ‘vampires.’ It is about “True Love”, with no smirk. Gee. If you had invested $100 in that little movie, you would have earned a profit of $900. I would almost think that here is ANOTHER bunch of people not served by the Great Minds of the present entertainment industry.
(Also, you may be surprised to note that there are the Twilight audience is not all teenie bopper types).

With cheaper film and editing equipment the indpendents are becoming stronger & able to break free from Hollywood and SAG.

For example, check out journeyquest ( http://www.journey-quest.com/ ) produced by DeadGentlemen Productions. It is a comedy set in a fantasy world.

This production co. is an independent group that uses non-SAG actors & survives off donations and direct sales (although they put almost all their work on the web for free viewing too). Their use of non-union labor allows them to cut costs (e.g. by not having to follow all the silly union rules) and produce fun films cheaply.